Seismic Data Filtering Using Non-Local Means Algorithm Based on Structure Tensor
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Open Geosci. 2017; 9:151–160 Research Article Open Access Shuai Yang, Anqing Chen*, and Hongde Chen Seismic data filtering using non-local means algorithm based on structure tensor DOI 10.1515/geo-2017-0013 Received Sep 22, 2016; accepted Feb 03, 2017 1 Introduction Abstract: Non-Local means algorithm is a new and ef- Filtering is a key step in seismic data processing [1]. Due to fective filtering method. It calculates weights of all sim- increasing demands for high-quality data, interpretation- ilar neighborhoods’ center points relative to filtering oriented processing becomes more and more important. point within searching range by Gaussian weighted Eu- Improved signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) by filtering process- clidean distance between neighborhoods, then gets fil- ing may facilitate subsequent studies of seismic geomor- tering point’s value by weighted average to complete phology, seismic facies and micro-structures as well as the filtering operation. In this paper, geometric distance reservoir prediction. of neighborhood’s center point is taken into account in Seismic data filtering may be realized through Gaus- the distance measure calculation, making the non-local sian filtering, median filtering, mean filtering and vari- means algorithm more reasonable. Furthermore, in order ous transform-domain approaches, e.g. Fourier transform- to better protect the geometry structure information of based f -k and f-x filtering, wavelet transform-based filter- seismic data, we introduce structure tensor that can de- ing [2, 3], curvelet transform-based filtering [4] and Radon pict the local geometrical features of seismic data. The co- transform-based filtering. Additionally, there is the filter- herence measure, which reflects image local contrast,is ing technique based on a geostatistical method which extracted from the structure tensor, is integrated into the makes use of the variogram function after decomposition non-local means algorithm to participate in the weight to do geostatistical estimation respectively to get the es- calculation, the control factor of geometry structure sim- timated value of the various components of the original ilarity is added to form a non-local means filtering algo- data, including the effective information and noise values. rithm based on structure tensor. The experimental results It has been applied to filtering of seismic data [5]. These prove that the algorithm can effectively restrain noise, with techniques are effective for seismic data filtering, but most strong anti-noise and amplitude preservation effect, im- of them have the disadvantages of blurring the details proving PSNR and protecting structure information of seis- and edges of an image in the process of noise reduction. mic image. The method has been successfully applied in Marginal reflections or seismic discontinuities may be seismic data processing, indicating that it is a new and ef- caused by faults, fractures, channels, lenticular geobodies fective technique to conduct the structure-preserved filter- or reefs. Such features are closely related to the interpre- ing of seismic data. tation of hydrocarbon reservoirs. Consequently some new techniques, e.g. filtering based on mathematical morphol- Keywords: Non-Local means; Structure tensor; Filter; Sim- ogy [6], structure constrained edge-preserved filtering [7], ilarity; Interpretative processing and anisotropic diffusion filtering based on partial differ- ential equation [8], have been developed to preserve edge structures or the contacts between reflections and forma- Shuai Yang: College of Geosciences, China University of tions. Petroleum(Beijing), Beijing, 102249, China; Institute of Sedimen- Buades et al. made a comparative study of some typi- tary Geology, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu, 610059, cal filtering techniques and developed a non-local means China; Email: [email protected] (NLM) algorithm for noise removal [9–11]. This algorithm *Corresponding Author: Anqing Chen: Institute of Sedimen- tary Geology, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu, 610059, was demonstrated to have better performance than other China; Email: [email protected]; Tel.: +86-028-84073252; typical denoising methods. David Bonar et al. success- Fax: +86-028-84078992 fully applied the NLM algorithm in seismic data denoising Hongde Chen: Institute of Sedimentary Geology, Chengdu with the idea of neighborhood matching and correlation University of Technology, Chengdu, 610059, China; Email: as well as weighted smoothing [12, 13], but they did not [email protected] © 2017 S. Yang et al., published by De Gruyter Open. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. 152 Ë S. Yang et al. take account of seismic geometric properties such as di- and its neighborhood Ni to the pixel j and its neighborhood rectivity and local contrast. Apparently, if a seismic pro- Nj. Note that each pixel i has its own independent weight- file or attribute slice is considered as a digital image, each ing factor of the other pixels j within the image, which is pixel would be characterized by two properties, i.e. numer- calculated by Equation (3). ical property of the pixel itself and geometric structure of (︂ )︂ 1 −D2(i, j) neighboring pixels. In this paper, we develop a new filter- w(i, j) = exp (3) Z(i) h2 ing algorithm for seismic data (image) processing. It inte- P grates similarity evaluation by local contrast with NLM fil- where Z(i) is the normalizing factor to ensure w(i, j) = 1, tering based on structure tensor, which captures the geo- j and defined by metric structure of an image [8]. The calculation of neigh- (︂ )︂ borhood similarity distance involves numerical similar- X −D2(i, j) Z(i) = exp (4) h2 ity and neighborhood geometric distance. A coherence at- j tribute, designed to describe local contrast, is added into weighting factor estimation to evaluate similarity. A con- The filtering parameter h is a constant which controls trol factor is also included to adjust the weight of geomet- the decay rate of the exponential function and thus deter- ric property. As per model data processing and residual er- mines the degree of filtering. For example, a large value ror images, this algorithm achieves a better result of edge for h will provide very similar weight for all pixels j, thus preservation. In addition, a large control factor reduces the the image would be blurred. On the contrary, a small value weight of geometric property for better noise attenuation. for h will provide a significant weight for only a few ofthe The results of field data processing also show that this al- pixels j, thus noises cannot be attenuated sufficiently. 2 gorithm is capable of edge preservation while noise sup- The Gaussian weighted Euclidean distance D (i, j) in pression. Equation (3) is defined by the following expression. D2 i j ⃒v N v N ⃒2 ( , ) = ⃒ ( i) − ( j)⃒2,a (5) nl X [︀ ]︀2 2 Theoretical studies = Ga(xl , yl) (v(Ni(l)) − v(Nj(l))) l 2.1 NLM filtering j j2 where the operator • 2, a denotes the squared factor of 2 Gaussian weighted Euclidean distance D (i, j), Ni repre- Previous denoising algorithms were developed under the sents a neighborhood with the center at the pixel i, which assumption that the raw image is regular. Moreover many is usually a square domain, Ga represents the Gaussian details of the image may also be smoothed in denoising. kernel with the standard deviation a, and l represents one These two disadvantages have been remedied by NLM fil- of the total nl elements within a neighborhood. tering developed by Buades et al. [14]. The basic idea of For a 2D image, the Gaussian kernel can be defined by, this algorithm is that an image usually contains a mass of (︂ 2 2 )︂ noises, thus an image v is defined as (x − x0) + (y − y0) Ga(x, y) = exp − (6) 2a2 v = u + n (1) where X0 and y0 represent the center of Gaussian kernel As per Equation (1), the image v is composed of the with x and y corresponding to the coordinates of the ele- original noise-free image u and random noise n. At the ment l in equation (5). pixel i, the NLM filtering result bv(i) is simply the weighted For three neighborhoods (in red, green and blue, re- average of all of pixels within the noisy image v. spectively) around a square image (in Figure 1a), the X weights of the centers in respect to other all of elements ^v(i) = w(i, j)v(j) (2) within the image are calculated by Equation (3). We ob- j viously can see, for red neighborhood (in Figure 1a), the In Equation (2), the weighting factor w(i, j) is dependent centers of all red neighborhoods in Figure 1b have larger on the similarity between pixels i and j, in addition must weighting factors due to good similarity. Similarly for P satisfy the conditions 0 ≤ w(i, j) ≤ 1 and w(i, j) = 1. The green neighborhood (in Figure 1a), the centers of all green j neighborhoods in Figure 1c have larger weighting factors. similarity between the pixels i and j is represented by Gaus- For blue neighborhood (in Figure 1a), the centers of all blue sian weighted Euclidean distance D(i, j) from the pixel i neighborhoods in Figure 1d have larger weighting factors. Seismic data filtering using non-local means algorithm Ë 153 center may be somewhat mitigated. In numerical calcula- tion, w(i, i)=0.5 or w(i, i) = max(w(i, j)8i≠j). In following calculation, w(i, i) = 0.5. Each pixel in the image would be compared with all pixels in the process of NLM filtering, which results in mass computation and low efficiency. For an image with M×N pixels, M×N weighting factors would be calculated repeat- edly for each pixel.